The present invention relates to the stacking and alignment of sheet document material which has been processed in office machines. Typically, documents of various types and sizes are fed through office machines, in which the documents are subjected to many different processing techniques.
Within an office copying machine for example, the original document or documents are handled by automatic sheet feeding apparatus located on, or over the document illumination platen of the copier. The sheet feeding apparatus may vary in complexity in the sense that it may be fully automatic, semi-automatic, or of a stream feeding nature. The simplist typical stream-fed document feeder apparatus for example will receive and feed single, hand-fed documents which are loaded one at a time. The semi-automatic feeders will accept a stack of documents, and will feed the documents automatically, one at a time from the stack, one time over the platen, while feeding the scanned documents into a receiving tray. The fully automatic document feeder can accept a stack of documents, separate and feed each document one at a time until the entire stack has been fed unto the platen, while simultaneously restacking the previously scanned documents in the same order, into the tray from where they were originally fed. This operation may be repeated for as many times as required to generate as many sets of documents as are required.
While the office copying machine may be equipped with original document handling apparatus such as those described, the typical copier also has copy sheet feeding apparatus included with its internal instrumentalities to facilitate a sheet feed from a supply stack and to accomplish reception of transfer of the developed image of each original unto that sheet. Thus, for each original document fed unto the illumination platen, a corresponding sheet is available for the purpose of receiving an image transfer as often as required. Typically, the copier has a photoconductor which receives the projected image of indicia illuminated from each original document. The process of the copier includes instrumentalities for preparation of reception of the image unto the photoconductor, and also development and transfer of the latent image to the copy sheet. In many copiers with a dry powder development process, the powder electrostatically attracts to the exposed image on the photoconductor, and is then further electrically forced to transfer from the photoconductor to each copy sheet.
Copy sheets thus provided with a transferred image are transported through the copier machine to a fusing station, just prior to being delivered to the operator.
In most cases, consideration is given for separately stacking the original documents and the copy sheets feed through the copier in receiving tray. The trays serve to stack and regroup the documents for operator convenience. It may also be necessary to register and align edges of the documents and sheets in the stacking and regrouping process to facilitate further processing in auxiliary document handling equipment.
Such auxiliary sheet processing equipment exists in the nature of collating or sorter machines which may be used to automatically group and sort documents provided from the copier output. An example of such equipment is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,146,215, issued Mar. 27, 1979 to Hans C. Mol.
The collator-sorter disclosed in the Mol patent describes the workings of a sheet processor that may be utilized as either a collator or sorter. The collator-sorter may be used separately or coupled with a copier. The device has the ability to function as a single tray receiver for sheets, or by using the multi-bin receiving compartments can handle the sheets as a sorter. There are included, gating devices which direct the sheets where required into appropriate bins. To further compliment this type of collator and sorter equipment, it is desirable that a document jogger mechanism be included to provide squared, registered stacks in the receiving bins for operator convenience.
A jogging device for documents is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,073,391 to O'Brien and Calderazo Feb. 14, 1978. The jogger provides apparatus to square the documents into a bundle, and is augmented by a stapling device, also provided for convenience. After stapling, the bundle is discharged into a receiving bin, where a separate mechanism is provided to offset each bundle for easy handling and identification.
While the previously described document stacking, jogging and bundling equipment is advantageously applied to document sheet material, the equipment described is provided in separate machines, some of which have to be used in a remote, inconvenient manner from the office machines documents are circulated, scanned and stacked and delivered. Basically, the prior art described henceforth does not provide convenient means to compactly apply jogging and registration alignment for documents fed into stacking trays such as those included in the latest available table top copying machines.